


Loosen Up

by goodnyte



Series: Shoulder Massage Extortion [1]
Category: Brave Police J-Decker
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,721
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnyte/pseuds/goodnyte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deckerd has a problem that Gunmax thinks he is uniquely suited to assist with: sore joints.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loosen Up

In hindsight, letting Build Team chase the suspect out onto an icy lake probably hadn’t been the smartest idea. Power Joe’s treads weren’t exactly made for slippery terrain and it only took him finding a thin patch of ice to fall through for the entire afternoon to go to hell. One careless mistake after another had resulted in Power Joe and Deckerd being soaked beyond what was medically advisable for giant robots who relied on electricity to function and a captured suspect who likely had a reasonable case of police misconduct to plead against them.

Gunmax tsked. As if shooting the ice out from under a guy to get him to stop had never been defended in a court of law before.

He’d been left out in the garage outside the maintenance room while Build Team fretted over Power Joe and Deckerd got himself tended to. Shadowmaru had taken off somewhere – so had Duke, as if Gunmax cared. He was glad the Brit bot was scarce; it spared him a lecture.

He was startled out of his stewing by the sound of the door to the mechanics’ bay opening; he looked up, expecting to see Build Team being unceremoniously kicked out by Toudou, but he blinked in surprise as Deckerd stepped through the door instead.

“Hey, _patoka_ ,” he said, standing up from the wall, his optics narrowing behind his visor. Deckerd…didn’t look very good. His plating was still dull and scraped from the cold water and ice they’d fought against to get him and Power Joe back on land and his movements were stiff and slow. “You okay, boy scout?” he asked, taking a few steps closer to the other Brave. “You weren’t in with Chief long.”

Deckerd leaned himself against the spare repair cradle with a huffing sigh. “Yes, I’m fine,” he said, looking up at Gunmax with a tired grin. “Power Joe is in worse shape than I am so I asked the engineers to focus on repairing him first,” he said, lifting an arm to swing it, rotating his shoulder’s rotor cuff. “I think I just need some rest,” he said, wincing as the joint hitched before letting the metal musculature move freely.

Gunmax frowned. He had a rough idea of what ‘fine’ was supposed to look like and he was pretty sure scuffed plating and a grimace to boot were disqualifying conditions. “That looks sore,” he persisted, closing the distance between them with a few steps. “I dunno if I believe you,” he said, poking at the shoulder plating experimentally.

Deckerd yelped, reflexively grabbing at the hurting shoulder with his opposite hand and grunting again when that shoulder locked up as well. Gunmax startled – well, he wouldn’t have done that had he known. “You are not fine,” he said with a scowl, optics narrowing dangerously beneath his visor.

Deckerd winced again, this time a distinctive sheepish look to his expression. “I’m _mostly_ fine,” he clarified with a mumble. “My joints are just stiff from the cold. It’ll wear off eventually.”

“Eventually.”

“Yes,” Deckerd said with stubborn frown. “Eventually.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Gunmax said, tilting his chin upward defiantly. He marched over to one of the horizontal repair berths and unceremoniously pushed a box of spare parts off to the side of it, placing his hands on his hips as soon as he was done, nodding in approval at his handiwork. He glanced back at Deckerd, gesturing to the berth with a pointed index digit. “Sit,” he instructed.

“Gunmax—”

“Did I stutter, _patoka_?” he asked with a grin, sidling back over to the cradle Deckerd had leaned against. “Or are you so sore that you can’t manage the walk?”

Deckerd hummed, perhaps realizing that it was futile to resist. He slowly propped himself up from the cradle and made his way to the berth, Gunmax following up behind him. “Sit?” he asked, looking to Gunmax with a teasing glint in his optic.

“Yes, sit. Unless you’re also too infirm to manage that,” he sneered back, but chuckled. If Deckerd was joking around then he probably _was_ fine. Just less fine than Gunmax would like him to be, thank you very much. “Okay, now scoot back,” he instructed once Deckerd was sitting on the berth, coming around behind him.

“What for?” Deckerd asked, but did as he was told, the picture of patience. Usually, that would irk Gunmax but at the moment, the other Brave’s agreeableness was working for him.

“I can’t just stand here and watch you work your rotor cuffs to useless like this,” he said, mimicking the rotating motion Deckerd had been making with his shoulder joints. “So let me take care of helping you ease up some while you defrost,” he said with a toothy grin.

Deckerd turned to look at him, wincing as he did so and proving Gunmax’s point. Still, he managed a skeptical frown. “Are you sure?” he asked, the squint in his optics betraying that he didn’t entirely Gunmax’s approach to nearly frozen joints. “It really can wait—”

“Nonsense!” Gunmax insisted, placing a hand on the back of Deckerd’s neck and gently _encouraging_ him to look ahead by twisting his neck forward. “I bet I’ll be done by the time Chief is ready to take a look at you, and then you can get back to Boss straight away,” he said.

Deckerd hummed again, relaxing a little at the mention of Yuuta. Yup, the guaranteed fastest way to get the Boy Scout to agree to anything.

“Speaking of, where is he?” Gunmax asked, letting a hand slip into the seam between Deckerd’s shoulder and collar assembly, searching for the locked up joints and tangled cabling to coax into relaxing. “Don’t mind if I chatter,” he added as a hurried interlude. “I always find being distracted helps.”

Deckerd made a discomfited grunting sound as Gunmax’s fingers found the first patch of crossed wiring. “Shadowmaru brought Yuuta home. He’s on watch at the house while I get patched up,” he explained, his impatience with that part of the situation evident. Gunmax knew well enough that Deckerd didn’t like to delegate those duties in particular. “Where did you learn to do this? It feels … odd,” he said, flinching again as Gunmax rubbed away at a knot of cabling.

“I noticed some of the guys on Highway Patrol doing this for each other sometimes,” he said with a shrug. “Most of them had a thing called a back-scratcher which let them—” he started to reach behind himself with one of his arms to demonstrate but when Deckerd turned around to see, he quickly stopped. “You know, scratch their own backs,” he said, replacing his hand in a seam beneath Deckerd’s light bar.

“And Gunmax Armor can get heavy,” he said. “So when I was by myself I’d just, you know, help myself out when I was sore. Not my shoulders, but everywhere else,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m not _that_ flexible.”

Deckerd hummed again, the sound a little lower now. “I didn’t realize,” he said slowly. “You wear the Armor right on top of your root frame, don’t you?” Gunmax gave an affirmative “mhm”, earning another hum from Deckerd in turn. “That must be heavy.”

“You get used to it,” he replied with a smirk to himself. “Though, now that I’m doing you this favor, maybe I’ll ask you for help with those shoulders I can’t reach.”

That earned a genuine chuckle. “Oh, is that what this is?” Deckerd asked, his shoulders shaking with laughter. “Some kind of extortion?”

“Shoulder massage extortion, yes,” Gunmax said, nodding. To be fair, it wasn’t a terrible idea; his shoulders were often sore after wearing the Armor for too long. Now he did have a favor to call in, instead of just sacrificing decent sleep for a few days while waiting for the ache to go away on its own. “How’s it feel?” he asked, as he reached another tangled cluster of wires as he moved from the left to Deckerd’s right shoulder.

“Much better,” was the mumbled response. “Your hands are warm,” Deckerd noted.

Gunmax blinked beneath his visor, his hands pausing for just a moment. Well then. “Still cold?” he asked, masking his concern with a teasing lilt to his question. He didn’t know how long it should take for a frame to warm up again after being beneath ice, but it had been a few hours, hadn’t it?

“No,” Deckerd said, and then hummed again. “A little,” he amended. “Why haven’t you asked for help before?” he asked.

“Asked for help?”

“If you’ve been sore.”

Gunmax startled, caught off guard again. “Oh,” he said, the other Brave's groggy line of question making sense dawning on him. “I’ve always managed on my own,” he said, shrugging.

Deckerd grunted in disagreement. “No,” he said, shaking his helm. “No need to be in pain when you have friends here,” he said. “You ought to ask.”

Hm, there he was with the ‘you ought to’ again. Gunmax appreciated the intention but he hated being told what to do. “Perhaps I will,” he said, humoring the other Brave for now.

“Good,” Deckerd mumbled, but said nothing more – and to think, Gunmax had been anticipating the full lecture he’d managed to avoid from Duke.

“Good?” he asked, but there was no answer. “Hey, Boy Scout?”

Gunmax leaned, tilting himself so that he could get a good look at Deckerd’s face. His optics were dim, his breaths coming in shallow through his vents – he was fast asleep. “Huh,” Gunmax said, pulling a face. Well, that probably spoke well of his handiwork. Deckerd had relaxed – entirely.

“Okay, _patoka_ ,” he said quietly with a final parting pat on the other Brave’s shoulders.

He carefully moved himself around to the side of the berth so that he could arrange Deckerd’s limbs on its surface; maneuvering his dead weight proved to not be the most graceful of tasks, but he eventually managed.

“Now you can rest,” he said, hands on his hips and a satisfying grin on his face. Deckerd had intended to rest until it got better all along but now, Gunmax knew, he’d rest a little easier. No need to be sore when a friend could help you out, he thought. Maybe he ought to start thinking more like that too.

 


End file.
